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first year hive mites concerns

I have two hives that I started with swarms from traps last summer. Both consist of one deep and one medium. I inspected them both last Sunday and they looked good, with the mediums full of honey and the deeps with bees. I only removed the mediums and look at the deep from the top. For the strong hive I added a medium and for the other hive I replaced 5 frame of honey with empty frames to give them more room. I put the mediums back on and went home.

Well, when I looked at the picture that I took at home, I saw a few mites on the broken broods that was built between the medium and deep of the stronger hive. I haven't use any chemical and would like to stay that way. Is these few mites a concern?

Re: first year hive mites concerns

Originally Posted by SFBee

I have two hives that I started with swarms from traps last summer. Both consist of one deep and one medium. I inspected them both last Sunday and they looked good, with the mediums full of honey and the deeps with bees. I only removed the mediums and look at the deep from the top. For the strong hive I added a medium and for the other hive I replaced 5 frame of honey with empty frames to give them more room. I put the mediums back on and went home.

Well, when I looked at the picture that I took at home, I saw a few mites on the broken broods that was built between the medium and deep of the stronger hive. I haven't use any chemical and would like to stay that way. Is these few mites a concern?

If you can see them they are a problem. Once they are "visible" the numbers are usually to high. Specially if you have more than one per broken drone cell like you mentioned. Right now more than 3 mites per hundred bees would be a bit much considering the queens just started laying in mass in the bay area about 2 1/2 weeks ago.

Re: first year hive mites concerns

Throw in a sticky board and do a mite count drop over 3 days. That will give you the best overall picture of what's going on. The bummer/good thing about SF is that there are lots of new beeks with rooftop hives, etc. It's popular. The downside is that there are people who don't ever treat their hives, and when they abscond, they take all those mites and inject them into your hive. Look for big late fall bumps, even after you've done methodical testing. I used MAQS this past fall and saved 5 hives from certain death.

Re: first year hive mites concerns

Some bees seem to be mite resistant and some are not. So which camp your bees are in will be a large part of the answer.

If your combs are built using comb foundation, then the comb between frames will be drone, because that's the main place the bees can build it. A general rulle with drone comb is that because mites prefer drone brood, if you go through some drone larvae and find no mites, the hive is likely doing well. But if you do find mites, it's a matter of how many. The often touted threshold for drone cells is an infetion rate of 25%. At that level it is believed by some you need to trake urgent action before mites overun the hive.

A way to elimnate a lot of mites from the hive, would be to clean up all the combs, scraping off any drone comb, This will remove a lot of mites. Do this several times per season. It requires no chemicals so is OK with the rulles that were made for this forum

If a hive has a very high level of mites, just drone brood sacrifice alone will likely not save the hive.

Re: first year hive mites concerns

As this was posted on the treatment free board.....I find it surprising that all of the 'don't do anything' crowd haven't weighed in. Organic or not...formic acid is hardly treatment free.
I suppose that drone brood removal, as Oldtimer suggests might be acceptable but if the infestation is already substantial, as he pointed out, it probably won't help.
In my opinion, if your intention is to be treatment free...your options are pretty limited.

Dan www.boogerhillbee.com
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards